Sunday, May 4, 2008

Not for Moi

--sigh-- I so wanted to love this book. It's set in France! The cover is red! It's not too thick and therefore not intimidating if I recommend it to someone! But, no, I struggled with it.

Myriam is opening Chez Moi with almost no resources. She fabricated her background to secure a loan, filled the place with secondhand furniture, and plans to do everything herself. She even lives there, takes baths in the sink, and sleeps on a banquette at night. Notice I haven't used the word restaurant. Myriam hesitates to call it a restaurant--she just wants to feed people for a reasonable price and struggles with any kind of indentifier. These are the aspects of the book I really liked.

But there's more to it. There's a background story, explaining how she came to be here. Something about it just wasn't satisfying to me--maybe something was lost in translation.?

Overall, it was okay. Not my favorite; kind of an uneven read. But if I had the chance, I'd love to have a meal at Chez Moi someday.